Fairy Tales

I have decided to talk about fairy tales for children this time. I think my choice is this one because when we hear “fairy tales” we usually think about Disney stories which contains a princess that wants to be with a handsome and strong prince, and that’s not totally true.

A fairy tale is a type of short story that has fantasy characters, such as fairies, goblins, trolls, dwarves, giants, mermaids or gnomes. Magic and enchantments appears in different ways. The term is also used to describe happy endings or romances, but not all the stories need to have these characteristics. The main point is that fairy tales are not true, and couldn’t be true.

This kind of stories are found in oral and literary form, but actually only the literary form can survive over generations. We have had fairy tales for thousand of years, although the term was created in the late 17^th century by Madame d’Aulnov. Many of fairy tales have variation in multiple cultures around the world.

Little Red Riding Hood is the one that I have chosen to talk about because I have seen that it has many different versions of the story, and I only knew the Disney one which was written by Charles Perrault. Grimm’s brothers have their own version called Little Red Cap and also Beatrix Potter (a writer that we have studied in this subject) has her own one called “The tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck”. The main interesting thing is that some countries have another versions, as Germany, Poland, Italia, Austria and France.

 

 

I am going to explain you one the best one for me, which is the Charles Marelles version, “The true History of Little Golden-Hood”. The story begins similar to the original one, a little peasant girl often called Little Golden-Hood has to take a piece of cake to her grandmother and come back without stopping to chatter on the way with people she doesn’t know. She has to cross a wood when she hears something. She finds a wolf who come frisking up to her like a good dog, saying that it is a friend wolf. She tells him she is going to her grandmother’s house and he replies that he shall gets before her and it is going to tell her grandmother that she is coming. When Little Golden-Hood arrives, the wolf is on the grandmother’s bed and they start talking about her arms, tongue, teeths… Finally, she starts running when she knows that she is not her grandmother and wolf tries to devour her but she only catch her little hood. Luckily, the fire-colored hood burn his tongue right down his throat. Just at this moment the grandmother arrives, returning from the town.

 

 

As you have seen, there was not hunter, the grandmother was alive, and the power is only in the little hood, which was one of those magic objects that I said before that a Fairy Tale should have.

 

See you soon!

My reading map

 

 

I am here again! This time I have chosen an exercise to talk about. I know it is not a big topic, and also it is not something that everybody probably know.

What could you imagine if I only say “Reading map”? Very easy, isn’t it? As you are thinking it is a map, the map you like the most or the map you are able to understand. And the word “reading” is easier because you don’t need to think more than the real definition and we both know what reading is. Well, obviously I didn’t want you to think only about those meanings, I want to explain you my experience making a reading map to facilitate you the understanding of what is it, what is used for, when you can do it and how.

I have done only one and my first impressions about this exercise were not good at all. I thought that I didn’t remember what books I liked when I was a child, and even when I was 15. Also, I am very bad drawing and I am not original… So, I knew that it was to be very difficult for me to complete the task. But I tried the best I could.

What you have to do is two documents thinking about your whole reading life, since you were a child until now, and trying to draw or make a collage with all of the books and the stages in which you read that. And finally, you need to explain in another paper what you have done and why. After telling you the characteristics of a reading map I am going to explain you why I think is a very good material to do with children.

It is an open task where teacher can develop the rules depending of the level or age of children. Logically, if you are a teacher of Fourth of Primary you will know that they haven’t read lots of books yet. But they can do a reading map drawing the characters, or writing ALL of the books they have read. Also, children are able to develop different skills as thinking, drawing, writing, memory and communication (with parents or friends). Children probably like the exercise because they don’t have a way to do it, they can do it however they want following the main rules. Finally, the teacher can organize how to show all of the maps to rest of the class with different ways, we have done it as a museum but you can do it as a game or as a quiz.

Behind an apparently easy and funny activity there are a lot of aims that a teacher could get with their children taking into account that all of them don’t paint or don’t write in the same way, but all of them are invited to think about it.

Now I invite you to see the best reading map that I have seen in my class, and also how was the experience with the museum.

 

 

Thank you, and see you soon!

Nursery Rhymes

As some of you know I am Laura, and I have created this blog to share with you my opinions, knowledge or something I could find interesting about Childrens’s Literature in English.

 

We have done almost a month of classes, so I have chosen my favourite class to talk about it. Do you remember what we did in Nursery Rhymes class?

It was a middle-group class, we were about 20 people, and we started the class talking with our partner about what could be the meaning of Nursery Rhymes. I have to say that I didn’t listen about that before. We finally found the definition and some characteristics through a fast dictation. But the most interesting part of the class came when we had to link different nursery rhymes with its historical event.

 

I want to try to explain you why this topic was interesting to me. Well, I have listened lots of children songs since I was a child, but I think I have never thought about the meaning before. Probably you can hear some words and you are able to relate this word to a children story without thinking in why someone has written or invented this song. But I could be able to see the reasons of some stories, and I understood the difference between being a child and being a teacher. A teacher knows that children won’t understand the whole meaning while they are listening the song, but I think a part of their minds will get the information and they will use it in another moment of their lives.

 

I also think that if you want to show your children nursery rhymes you should take into account that there are different types of choral speaking as refrain, unison, antiphon, cumulative, solo lines or line around. Why am I saying this? Because when you know which are the objectives that you want to get with your students, you can study what type will be easy for children to get it. As I said before I have never worked with Nursery Rhymes but I think if you want everything to understand what they are singing at the same moment, they should sing together. Or for example, if you want them to make a group task will be better use an antiphon choral speaking.

 

Finally, I want to show you my favourite nursery rhyme. I have song lots of times as a summer camp instructor without knowing that is called nursery rhyme.

Have you ever listened or song “If you are happy and you know it?”

In my opinion this song is very useful for 4-5 year-old-children because they can understand it and it is easy to follow, and also they can learn vocabulary specific with body parts or body movements.

 

 
 
I hope you liked it and I am waiting for your posts!